(1) Field of the Invention
The invention concerns certain novel quinazoline derivatives, or pharmaceutically-acceptable salts thereof, which possess anti-tumour activity and are accordingly useful in methods of treatment of the human or animal body. The invention also concerns processes for the manufacture of said quinazoline derivatives, to pharmaceutical compositions containing them and to their use in therapeutic methods, for example in the manufacture of medicaments for use in the prevention or treatment of solid tumour disease in a warm-blooded animal such as man.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Many of the current treatment regimes for diseases resulting from the abnormal regulation of cellular proliferation such as psoriasis and cancer, utilise compounds that inhibit DNA synthesis and cellular proliferation. To date, compounds used in such treatments are generally toxic to cells however their enhanced effects on rapidly dividing cells such as tumour cells can be beneficial. Alternative approaches to these cytotoxic anti-tumour agents are currently being developed, for example selective inhibitors of cell signalling pathways. These types of inhibitors are likely to have the potential to display an enhanced selectivity of action against tumour cells and so are likely to reduce the probability of the therapy possessing unwanted side effects.
Eukaryotic cells are continually responding to many diverse extracellular signals that enable communication between cells within an organism. These signals regulate a wide variety of physical responses in the cell including proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis and motility. The extracellular signals take the form of a diverse variety of soluble factors including growth factors as well as paracrine and endocrine factors. By binding to specific transmembrane receptors, these ligands integrate the extracellular signal to the intracellular signalling pathways, therefore transducing the signal across the plasma membrane and allowing the individual cell to respond to its extracellular signals. Many of these signal transduction processes utilise the reversible process of the phosphorylation of proteins that are involved in the promotion of these diverse cellular responses. The phosphorylation status of target proteins is regulated by specific kinases and phosphatases that are responsible for the regulation of about one third of all proteins encoded by the mammalian genome. As phosphorylation is such an important regulatory mechanism in the signal transduction process, it is therefore not surprising that aberrations in these intracellular pathways result in abnormal cell growth and differentiation and so promote cellular transformation (reviewed in Cohen et al., Curr Opin Chem Biol, 1999, 3, 459-465).
It has been widely shown that a number of these tyrosine kinases are mutated to constitutively active forms and/or when over-expressed result in the transformation of a variety of human cells. These mutated and over-expressed forms of the kinase are present in a large proportion of human tumours (reviewed in Kolibaba et al., Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 1997, 133, F217-F248). As tyrosine kinases play fundamental roles in the proliferation and differentiation of a variety of tissues, much focus has centred on these enzymes in the development of novel anti-cancer therapies. This family of enzymes is divided into two groups—receptor and non-receptor tyrosine kinases e.g. EGF Receptors and the SRC family respectively. From the results of a large number of studies including the Human Genome Project, about 90 tyrosine kinase have been identified in the human genome, of this 58 are of the receptor type and 32 are of the non-receptor type. These can be compartmentalised in to 20 receptor tyrosine kinase and 10 non-receptor tyrosine kinase sub-families (Robinson et al, Oncogene, 2000, 19, 5548-5557).
The receptor tyrosine kinases are of particular importance in the transmission of mitogenic signals that initiate cellular replication. These large glycoproteins, which span the plasma membrane of the cell possess an extracellular binding domain for their specific ligands (such as Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF) for the EGF Receptor). Binding of ligand results in the activation of the receptor's kinase enzymatic activity that is encoded by the intracellular portion of the receptor. This activity phosphorylates key tyrosine amino acids in target proteins, resulting in the transduction of proliferative signals across the plasma membrane of the cell.
It is known that the erbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases, which include EGFR, erbB2, erbB3 and erbB4, are frequently involved in driving the proliferation and survival of tumour cells (reviewed in Olayioye et al., EMBO J., 2000, 19, 3159). One mechanism in which this can be accomplished is by overexpression of the receptor at the protein level, generally as a result of gene amplification. This has been observed in many common human cancers (reviewed in Klapper et al., Adv. Cancer Res., 2000, 77, 25) such as breast cancer (Sainsbury et al., Brit. J. Cancer, 1988, 58, 458; Guerin et al., Oncogene Res., 1988, 3, 21; Slamon et al., Science, 1989, 244, 707; Klijn et al., Breast Cancer Res. Treat., 1994, 29, 73 and reviewed in Salomon et al., Crit. Rev. Oncol. Hematol., 1995, 19, 183), non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs) including adenocarcinomas (Cerny et al., Brit. J. Cancer, 1986, 54, 265; Reubi et al., Int. J. Cancer, 1990, 45, 269; Rusch et al., Cancer Research, 1993, 53, 2379; Brabender et al, Clin. Cancer Res., 2001, 7, 1850) as well as other cancers of the lung (Hendler et al., Cancer Cells, 1989, 7, 347; Ohsaki et al., Oncol. Rep., 2000, 7, 603), bladder cancer (Neal et al., Lancet, 1985, 366; Chow et al., Clin. Cancer Res., 2001, 7, 1957, Zhau et al., Mol Carcinog., 3, 254), oesophageal cancer (Mukaida et al., Cancer, 1991, 68, 142), gastrointestinal cancer such as colon, rectal or stomach cancer (Bolen et al., Oncogene Res., 1987, 1, 149; Kapitanovic et al., Gastroenterology, 2000, 112, 1103; Ross et al., Cancer Invest., 2001, 19, 554), cancer of the prostate (Visakorpi et al., Histochem. J., 1992, 24, 481; Kumar et al., 2000, 32, 73; Scher et al., J. Natl. Cancer Inst., 2000, 92, 1866), leukaemia (Konaka et al., Cell 1984, 37, 1035, Martin-Subero et al., Cancer Genet Cytogenet., 2001, 127, 174), ovarian (Hellstrom et al., Cancer Res., 2001, 61, 2420), head and neck (Shiga et al., Head Neck, 2000, 22, 599) or pancreatic cancer (Ovotny et al., Neoplasma, 2001, 48, 188). As more human tumour tissues are tested for expression of the erbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases it is expected that their widespread prevalence and importance will be further enhanced in the future.
As a consequence of the mis-regulation of one or more of these receptors, it is widely believed that many tumours become clinically more aggressive and so correlate with a poorer prognosis for the patient (Brabender et al, Clin. Cancer Res., 2001, 7, 1850; Ross et al, Cancer Investigation, 2001, 19, 554, Yu et al., Bioessays, 2000, 22.7, 673). In addition to these clinical findings, a wealth of pre-clinical information suggests that the erbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases are involved in cellular transformation. This includes the observations that many tumour cell lines overexpress one or more of the erbB receptors and that EGFR or erbB2 when transfected into non-tumour cells have the ability to transform these cells. This tumourigenic potential has been further verified as transgenic mice that overexpress erbB2 spontaneously develop tumours in the mammary gland. In addition to this, a number of pre-clinical studies have demonstrated that anti-proliferative effects can be induced by knocking out one or more erbB activities by small molecule inhibitors, dominant negatives or inhibitory antibodies (reviewed in Mendelsohn et al., Oncogene, 2000, 19, 6550). Thus it has been recognised that inhibitors of these receptor tyrosine kinases should be of value as a selective inhibitor of the proliferation of mammalian cancer cells (Yaish et al. Science, 1988, 242, 933, Kolibaba et al., Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, 1997, 133, F217-F248; Al-Obeidi et al., 2000, Oncogene, 19, 5690-5701; Mendelsohn et al, 2000, Oncogene, 19, 6550-6565).
Recently the small molecule EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor, Iressa (also known as gefitinib, and ZD1834) has been approved for use in the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer. Furthermore, findings using inhibitory antibodies against EGFR and erbB2 (c-225 and trastuzumab respectively) have proven to be beneficial in the clinic for the treatment of selected solid tumours (reviewed in Mendelsohn et al., 2000, Oncogene, 19, 6550-6565).
Amplification and/or activity of members of the erbB receptor tyrosine kinases have been detected and so have been implicated to play a role in a number of non-malignant proliferative disorders such as psoriasis (Ben-Bassat, Curr. Pharm. Des., 2000, 6, 933; Elder et al., Science, 1989, 243, 811), benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) (Kumar et al., Int. Urol. Nephrol., 2000, 32, 73), atherosclerosis and restenosis (Bokemeyer et al., Kidney Int., 2000, 58, 549). It is therefore expected that inhibitors of erbB receptor tyrosine kinases will be useful in the treatment of these and other non-malignant disorders of excessive cellular proliferation.
Patent applications WO 94/27965, WO 95/03283, WO 96/09294, WO 96/30347, WO 96/33977, WO 96/33978, WO 96/33979, WO 96/33980, WO 96/33981, WO 97/03069, WO 97/30034, WO 97/30035, WO 97/30044, WO 97/38983, WO 97/38994, WO 98/02434, WO 98/13354, WO 99/06387, WO 99/35132, WO 00/51991, WO 00/55141, WO 00/56720, WO 01/21596, WO 01/98277, WO02/18351, WO 02/18372, WO 02/41882, WO 02/92577, WO 02/92578, WO 03/82290, WO 03/82831, EP 520 722, EP 566 226, EP 602 851, EP 635 507 and EP 837 063 disclose that certain quinazoline derivatives which bear a substituent at the 4-position and a substituent at the 5-, 6- and/or 7-position possess receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitory activity.
Patent application WO 00/20402 discloses certain quinazoline derivatives that carry a 3-carboxamidoanilino group at the 4-position on the quinazoline are cytokine inhibitors.